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> “Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate abou

> “Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.’” So is his sense of 'desperation' a result of political differences, or as a result of his findings?

tomohawk 9y ago
It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their consideration for the warrant. The fact that it was not disclosed shows that either the leadership of the FBI was overzealous or also very biased. Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  "It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their consideration for the warrant. " Actually no, legally, it has no impact or relevance. The same way that whether a prosecutor likes or hates you doesn't matter to a warrant application. It matters whether they have probable cause or not. If they have probable cause, there is no malicious prosecution claim you can make. Judge is supposed to look at the evidence, see if there is evidence of probable cause, and if so, approve it. Otherwise, deny it. Either that happened or it didn't. Either all the relevant (and again, bias is not relevant) evidence supporting the warrant were provided or it wasn't. The judge is the neutral adjudicator, not the investigator. There is a lot of caselaw on this because bias of informants is always challenged (and pretty much always loses): http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-behind-releaseth/print http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-... "Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse." This is not correct AFAIK. There is no legal statute or local court rules i'm aware of saying any such thing. If you know one, please cite it. (I used to be very heavily into this area when i interned at the Center for Democracy and Technology many years ago). The FBI is only driven by the attorney general's guidelines, which are not overseen or approved by anyone else, and carry no force of law.
  - tomohawk 9y ago
    In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. This is the weakness of courts - they can only rule on what is presented to them. Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. So, obviously biased FBI officials should not have been involved in preparing or approving the FISA warrant application.
    - DannyBee 9y ago
      "In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. " What evidence, precisely, do you think? As all the caselaw i cited says, bias is not evidence. The standard for probable cause is not very high. Fun fact: it's also not legally actionable, even if evidence was hidden, if it's likely the warrant would have been approved anyway. "Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. " Please cite actual caselaw instead of bare assertions. I'm aware of no caselaw that says this, and i'm a lawyer with a significant amount of knowledge about FISA warrants and FBI guidelines/rules. The only regulations here are internal to the FBI (though published in the CFR i believe), which are not "a legal standard" and are 100% irrelevant to what they need to do in front of a court. (also note that there is a separate set of FBI guidelines that are classified that cover certain types of investigations. I do not remember if they cover the investigation type that occurred here)
- wgj 9y ago
  Steele was never an FBI officer.
  - tomohawk 9y ago
    In this case, he was a witness. The FBI selectively disclosed the available information they had from him and about him to the FISC in a way to bias the court's decision. How would you like the FBI to make a similar case about you or your favorite politician to the FISC? The FBI is there to protect our rights, not infringe on them. Many of the FBI officials who had approval authority had at least an apparent conflict of interest and should have recused.
    - wgj 9y ago
      If sources and informants had to meet the same standard as FBI officers, we wouldn't have very many sources or informants. There's an expectation that people outside law enforcement aren't going to meet the standards of law enforcement. That said, I'm not an expert in these matters, and I'm looking forward to the rebuttal memo to see what the other viewpoint is.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > That said, I'm not an expert in these matters, and I'm looking forward to the rebuttal memo to see what the other viewpoint is. The Republicans have prohibited the release of the minority memo. https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=342 https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle...
        koolba 9y ago
        That's disingenuous. They haven't prevented the eventual release of it. What they've prevented is circumventing the rules of the oversight committee which have a series of events (committee vote, wider vote, review, etc) prior to a public release. Rep Adam Schiff not doing his homework soon enough for it to be released in tandem with the Republican memo is his fault. They're not stopping it, they're just requiring he follow the same rules.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, It only shows bias if there is evidence that the feeling confessed arose prior to the assembly of the dossier. > The fact that it was not disclosed shows that either the leadership of the FBI was overzealous or also very biased Or that the history of back-and-forth with FISC over FISA applications led them to believe that, in the totality of circumstances, this is not information that FISC would consider material in the application.
  - tomohawk 9y ago
    The dossier was bought and paid for by the DNC. It had a partisan origin which was not disclosed. Steele's time was bought and paid for by the DNC. The FBI officials had clear conflicts of interest, but I guess they thought they could get away with it since its all classified.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The dossier was bought and paid for by the DNC. It had a partisan origin which was not disclosed. That's a different issue than the issue of whether or not Steele’s personal strong opposition to Trump after gathering the dossier shows “bias” that negates it's credibility, which was the topic under discussion in this subthread.
      - tomohawk 9y ago
        Funny. A guy is paid by a political party to dig up or manufacture dirt on another candidate, and you don't think that this would be something that the court might be interested in when its asked to issue an extraordinary warrant based on it? You don't think him being paid wouldn't bias him? Incredible. We now have the spectacle of a partisan organization laundering opposition research through the FBI in order to engage the full power of the intelligence community to eavesdrop on the opposition. If this doesn't signal the need for FISA reforms, what will?
- goalieca 9y ago
  > As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-statement-on-hpsci-memo https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-stateme... Let's not forget that this memo was voted to be released by republicans, the democratic one was voted down. Take politics into consideration when reviewing the memo.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- mcphage 9y ago
  > It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest If a police officer is investigating you for committing a crime, they don’t recuse themselves because they think you’re guilty. That’s why they’re investigating you.

tomohawk 9y ago

It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their consideration for the warrant. The fact that it was not disclosed shows that either the leadership of the FBI was overzealous or also very biased. Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse.

DannyBee 9y ago
"It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their consideration for the warrant. " Actually no, legally, it has no impact or relevance. The same way that whether a prosecutor likes or hates you doesn't matter to a warrant application. It matters whether they have probable cause or not. If they have probable cause, there is no malicious prosecution claim you can make. Judge is supposed to look at the evidence, see if there is evidence of probable cause, and if so, approve it. Otherwise, deny it. Either that happened or it didn't. Either all the relevant (and again, bias is not relevant) evidence supporting the warrant were provided or it wasn't. The judge is the neutral adjudicator, not the investigator. There is a lot of caselaw on this because bias of informants is always challenged (and pretty much always loses): http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-behind-releaseth/print http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-... "Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse." This is not correct AFAIK. There is no legal statute or local court rules i'm aware of saying any such thing. If you know one, please cite it. (I used to be very heavily into this area when i interned at the Center for Democracy and Technology many years ago). The FBI is only driven by the attorney general's guidelines, which are not overseen or approved by anyone else, and carry no force of law.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. This is the weakness of courts - they can only rule on what is presented to them. Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. So, obviously biased FBI officials should not have been involved in preparing or approving the FISA warrant application.
  - DannyBee 9y ago
    "In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. " What evidence, precisely, do you think? As all the caselaw i cited says, bias is not evidence. The standard for probable cause is not very high. Fun fact: it's also not legally actionable, even if evidence was hidden, if it's likely the warrant would have been approved anyway. "Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. " Please cite actual caselaw instead of bare assertions. I'm aware of no caselaw that says this, and i'm a lawyer with a significant amount of knowledge about FISA warrants and FBI guidelines/rules. The only regulations here are internal to the FBI (though published in the CFR i believe), which are not "a legal standard" and are 100% irrelevant to what they need to do in front of a court. (also note that there is a separate set of FBI guidelines that are classified that cover certain types of investigations. I do not remember if they cover the investigation type that occurred here)
wgj 9y ago
Steele was never an FBI officer.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  In this case, he was a witness. The FBI selectively disclosed the available information they had from him and about him to the FISC in a way to bias the court's decision. How would you like the FBI to make a similar case about you or your favorite politician to the FISC? The FBI is there to protect our rights, not infringe on them. Many of the FBI officials who had approval authority had at least an apparent conflict of interest and should have recused.
  - wgj 9y ago
    If sources and informants had to meet the same standard as FBI officers, we wouldn't have very many sources or informants. There's an expectation that people outside law enforcement aren't going to meet the standards of law enforcement. That said, I'm not an expert in these matters, and I'm looking forward to the rebuttal memo to see what the other viewpoint is.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > That said, I'm not an expert in these matters, and I'm looking forward to the rebuttal memo to see what the other viewpoint is. The Republicans have prohibited the release of the minority memo. https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=342 https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle...
      - koolba 9y ago
        That's disingenuous. They haven't prevented the eventual release of it. What they've prevented is circumventing the rules of the oversight committee which have a series of events (committee vote, wider vote, review, etc) prior to a public release. Rep Adam Schiff not doing his homework soon enough for it to be released in tandem with the Republican memo is his fault. They're not stopping it, they're just requiring he follow the same rules.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, It only shows bias if there is evidence that the feeling confessed arose prior to the assembly of the dossier. > The fact that it was not disclosed shows that either the leadership of the FBI was overzealous or also very biased Or that the history of back-and-forth with FISC over FISA applications led them to believe that, in the totality of circumstances, this is not information that FISC would consider material in the application.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  The dossier was bought and paid for by the DNC. It had a partisan origin which was not disclosed. Steele's time was bought and paid for by the DNC. The FBI officials had clear conflicts of interest, but I guess they thought they could get away with it since its all classified.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The dossier was bought and paid for by the DNC. It had a partisan origin which was not disclosed. That's a different issue than the issue of whether or not Steele’s personal strong opposition to Trump after gathering the dossier shows “bias” that negates it's credibility, which was the topic under discussion in this subthread.
    - tomohawk 9y ago
      Funny. A guy is paid by a political party to dig up or manufacture dirt on another candidate, and you don't think that this would be something that the court might be interested in when its asked to issue an extraordinary warrant based on it? You don't think him being paid wouldn't bias him? Incredible. We now have the spectacle of a partisan organization laundering opposition research through the FBI in order to engage the full power of the intelligence community to eavesdrop on the opposition. If this doesn't signal the need for FISA reforms, what will?
goalieca 9y ago
> As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-statement-on-hpsci-memo https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-stateme... Let's not forget that this memo was voted to be released by republicans, the democratic one was voted down. Take politics into consideration when reviewing the memo.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mcphage 9y ago
> It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest If a police officer is investigating you for committing a crime, they don’t recuse themselves because they think you’re guilty. That’s why they’re investigating you.